More often than not, people find talking about sex with Christians inappropriate, or are just plain uncomfortable doing so because they have this image in their heads that the Christian will turn judgmental and think them ‘dirty-minded’.
Little wonder, then, that even within Christian circles, sex is a subject that is seldom broached, much less between married couples and their pastors or church elders.
The fact of the matter is that sex is not dirty, and especially not within the context of marriage! As a certain singer once sang, and I’ll apply it loosely here to marital sex, “sex is natural, sex is fun, sex is best one on one”.
How can sex be dirty when it is God who created us and made it such that the sex act for us human beings is a pleasurable thing, and not simply an act for the propagation of the human race?
However, we should all bear in mind as well that God intended sex to be confined only to marriage, strictly defined as the union between a man and a woman.
“Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”
– Hebrews 13:4 (KJV)
So what does the Bible teach about marital sex?
First, as Christians, we all need to be mindful that God intended that married couples enjoy a fulfilling sexual relationship, and that besides growing together in love and understanding, a couple should also grow in sexual understanding.
In other words, God intended for you as a married couple to know more about sex and be proficient in affording sexual pleasure to each other so that you can enjoy a fulfilling sexual relationship! Some Christian couples think sexual naivety is being pious, but that’s very wrong!
If you’re lacking in sexual knowledge or are not well-versed in how to please your spouse sexually in bed, it’s time to seek to do better! How else would you be able to experience what God intended for you in your marriage bed?
God does not stipulate a standard frequency for sexual relations between a husband and wife, but we are taught that both husband and wife should not deny or withhold sex from each other.
“Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”
– 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 (KJV)
How well God knows the hearts of men and women! The reason married couples should not withhold sex from each other is so that Satan does not have a chance to tempt either spouse! Today, not only men, but women as well, tend to stray from the marriage bed if marital sex is an issue in a marriage, and we’ve all heard of one or two such stories among our circle of friends and acquaintances.
1 Corinthians 7:3-5 (KJV) is perhaps the most comprehensive instructions in the Bible on marital sex and how a husband and wife should conduct themselves with each other sexually. Verse 4 is especially powerful, and which many fail to grasp — “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.”
In other words, God says that when you get married, your body belongs to your spouse, and vice versa!
I am not saying that the wife or husband must always give in to her or his partner’s sexual advances. Our fast-paced and stressful lives today put a damper on sexual relations, and some couples already count themselves blessed to be able to have sexual relations once a month. However, a married couple must also be mindful not to withhold for too long lest temptation creeps in.
Remember this: faithfulness, communication and romance, mixed in with a good knowledge of sex and understanding of what sex is meant to be within a marriage, are key to a happy marriage.
Children
I probably am not the best person to comment on having children and planning a family, since I don’t intend to have children in direct contradiction to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28, KJV).
Neither am I qualified to give advice on how to plan and start a family, or build a God-centric family seeing as I don’t have children.
So I’ll leave this section rather untouched for now, until I can find resources I think might be helpful to Christian couples planning on starting a family.
A Happy Marriage
In Ecclesiastes 9:9 (KJV), God tells us husbands to
“Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.”
– Ecclesiastes 9:9 (KJV)
It takes two hands to clap, so this means that the wife has to play her part as well to ensure a happy marriage.
The happiest marriages are those where a couple — the husband and wife — both work hard to make it so. There’s no secret to a happy marriage nor are there shortcuts to one. A marriage is a commitment for life, to one person, in a relationship ordained by God from the beginning of time!
Count yourself blessed for your caring wife or husband, because God specifically tells husbands that
“Whoso finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor of the Lord”
And we all know that a wife can only be as “good” as a husband himself is good, loving her as Christ loves His Church.
Conclusion
I hope you have found this three-part series on Christian marriage helpful in one way or another.
In closing, I would like to dedicate the entire series to my wife, the love of my life who has made me a blessed man in the eyes of God.
For believing in me when I thought myself worthless, for standing beside me and holding my hand when I was in my darkest hours, and most of all, for loving me the way you do. An early Happy 10th Wedding Anniversary, dear.
And to all my readers: God bless you and your spouse in your marriage.
Photo by Charlotte Dubois.
Tags: Children, Happy Marriage, Love, Marriage, Sex
-
Impressive: Taking on “The Christian Perspective On Marriage — The Final Part: Sex, Children And A Happy Marriage” as a topic, and reaching the goal in just a few hundred words.
It’s something of a relief to hear a reasoned approach to this topic.
I’m an American, born into a Protestant main-stream denomination, and converted to Catholicism as an adult.
That gives me a certain perspective on the nature of marriage.
What follows is a persona view, not necessarily the view of the Catholic Church.
You’ve used the King James Version of the Bible here, so I’ll follow suit.
Ephesians 5:22-26 (King James Version)
“22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
…
25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; ”
When I was growing up there were quite a few men who took verse 22, and used it as an excuse to lord it over their wives. There probably still are.
I’ve got a habit of reading all of a contract or other agreement - which led me to verse 25.
I got married, anyway, knowing that it meant that I would be expected, if necessary, to do for my wife what Jesus did for His church: die horribly.
Enough! I’ll be writing all night at this rate.
-
Thank you very much for the kind comments.
I think that’s awful — as I mentioned in the second part of the series, while wives should submit to their husbands, the husbands have the responsibility to love their wives as Christ loves the Church.
And Christ does not lord it over us the way these husbands control their wives. We submit to Christ and He loves us, even giving His life for the washing away of our sins.
So you’re absolutely right, and I share your views on this totally.
What I am interested in is why you chose to convert to Roman Catholicism?
-
Short (!) version:
About a quarter of a century ago, my wife-to-be and I were going through the process of preparing for marriage. She was Catholic, and I was Protestant, so there were a few extra details to work out.
One of them was that I had to agree that the children would be raised with Catholic beliefs. Reasonable enough, but before agreeing, I had to know what those “Catholic beliefs” were.
I discovered that much of what I thought I knew about the Catholic Church was either about four centuries out of date, or flat-out wrong.
The teachings of the Catholic Church were either the same as what I had been brought up with, or seemed to make more sense and/or be more specific.
That wasn’t too surprising: I already knew that the Catholic Church had a continuous existence, going back to Jesus of Nazareth’s disciple Peter.
Then there was the matter of birth control. I read Humanae Vitae (in translation, of course) cover-to-cover, and some parts more often. I was looking for a logical flaw, or some part that had been mis-interpreted by the regional church: something, anything, to get around the rules.
I couldn’t find a thing. The only way to reject the reasoning behind the Church’s ban on artificial contraceptives was to first reject some basic concepts about the nature of reality.
I wasn’t willing to do that. I think that: reality is real; that causality exists; that free will exists; and that a self-aware, all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God exists. I’m not likely to discard any of those beliefs.
So I resigned myself to accept that which I could not defeat.
After many years of living like this, nominally Protestant but learning more and more about the Catholic Church.
I decided that my wife followed a faith which had been maintained for about two millennia by an organization which had been founded, not by Peter, but by the person who gave Peter the commission to build that church. (Matthew 16:18 , the ‘on this rock’ verse)
Not everyone thinks this way, but this is the way I saw it:
* Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, commissioned Simon to build His church, re-naming him Peter in the process (I know - that’s the English version of the name).
* Peter passed this commission on to his successor, and so on, until Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received the commission and became Pope Benedict XVI. >>The Catholic Pope gets his authority from a chain of succession which leads all the way back to the Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, Co-Creator of the world, and savior of all humankind.>It should have collapsed long ago. It hasn’t. Any human institution would have. Something’s holding it up.
-
There’s an interesting article, “Matthew Chapter 16, Verse 18: The Primacy of Peter” at ( http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap050200.htm )
-
I believe that Christ was pointing to Himself as the Rock upon which the Church will be built. It’s most funny that Christ would choose a human being to build the Church upon, because Christ is the Cornerstone and the Rock.
Is it not Christ the Rock that smashes the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream?
I think we have many parallels in life — like you, my wife comes from a Roman Catholic family, but the difference ends there as I insisted on Protestant teachings.
There are many things I disagree with when it comes to Roman Catholic teachings which begets a few posts to explain.
-
I find it very interesting that, even though you mention a few scriptures in reference to the woman’s role in a marriage, the preponderance of your remarks seem to be geared toward husbands. I am not arguing against what has been said, for it is all true; but I do think that it is rather unbalanced. While the New Testament seems to divide itself equally between discussion of the respective roles of husbands and wives (i.e. Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, I Peter 3:1-7, in which the first gives more direction to husbands, and the last gives more directions to wives), the Old Testament speaks more to how wives are to behave - Proverbs alone contrasts the differences between virtuous wives and foolish ones, see Prov. 14:1 and the last part of Prov. 31 for examples). Focusing solely on one half of the marriage without equally addressing the other half may have/has had serious ramifications….
-
You are right, William. I think I might have missed out that big part pretty bad. Perhaps a follow-up should be in order, I’ll take note and do a piece on it some time soon.
There’s already a backlog of topics I’ve got written down on file as it is, lol!
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://wordnverse.com/2007/08/11/the-christian-perspective-on-marriage-the-final-part-sex-children-and-a-happy-marriage/trackback/